RSS Syndication

India’s public spending on health ‘meagre’ – President

New Delhi – Exactly after almost a month and a half of his promise to the nation that his ‘government is committed to providing affordable and accessible healthcare to all its citizens’, President Pranab Mukherjee lamented on ‘meagre’ public expenditure on health. The Union Budget 2015-16, presented in Parliament by Finance Minister, saw a lower budgetary allocation to healthcare by about 6% from the previous year’s expenditure.
“India’s public expenditure on health is meagre. We fare below our BRIC peers on this count as well. India’s per capita government expenditure on health in PPP terms is US Dollar 44, as against 809 in Russia, 474 in Brazil and 236 in China,’ said Mukherjee addressing the National Interventional Council of the Cardiological Society of India in New Delhi. “Considering that we are a sixth of humanity, a significant rise in health expenditure is urgently required to ensure universal health coverage.
Healthcare in India still is a distant dream for a sizeable number of the population. According to World Health Organisation, WHO, 39 million Indians are pushed to poverty due to ill-health every year. Worse, according to the WHO report, around 30 per cent in rural India do not go for any treatment due to financial constraints.